The Backyard Invites

I posted a preview of The Backyard Invitations last week, but now that The Backyard Groom has done some magic to obscure our personal info, they are ready for a full reveal.

Here's the scoop. I could not be happier with our invitations. They are different than most of the wedding invites I've seen, and that's probably why I love them so much. They are very us, and every RSVP we've received so far has included a mention about how cool they are. But sadly, I don't think these pictures do them justice.

Anyway, Non-Bridesmaid C. (who might be starting her own invitation business!) designed these for us. She knew we wanted to go as economical as possible so we stuck with two pieces, an invitation and a response card, that could both be made from one piece of cardstock from PaperSource. Then she picked some fabulous red #10 envelopes with string and button closures to pack them in. And on her recommendation, I added the too cute King and Queen of Hearts stamps and sent them on their merry way.

But you don't want words. You want pictures, right? First, here are a few more words and one detail. In my post about my lack of DIY skills, I talked about how Non-Bridesmaid C. was screenprinting the invites by hand. Since our invite is all text, including some small text, the screenprinting, while adding a really cool handmade feel, ended up making some of the smaller text difficult to read, as you can see below, particularly for "November" and the end of "Saturday".

We worried it might be too hard for people to read, so C. ended up printing them out on her fancy printer, and I still think they look cool and handmade. Here's a shot of the entire invitation with some info blocked out:

In the bottom left corner, she included a small detail of a tree with twinkle lights (which you can see better in the preview post). She carried the string lights idea into the response card and even the envelope. Because the RSVP card had less text, she was able to screenprint it by hand. (Yes, after some debate, we decided to go with an e-mail RSVP. I'm sure both Emily Post and Emily Gilmore wouldn't approve, but the Earth will.)

Here's a shot of the edge of the envelopes that carried on the string light motif that was also screenprinted:

So here's a shot of the full suite:

How are your invites different than the norm?